Keyword: stossel

Republicans held the Senate! Democrats took the House but by a narrower margin! Did I just embarrass myself? I write this Election Day morning, before most polling places even opened. I don't know the actual results, of course. But I'll pretend I do because I trust the betting odds. As of Tuesday morning, ElectionBettingOdds.com, a site I co-founded, says Republicans have an 84 percent chance to hold the Senate and Democrats a 71 percent chance to retake the House. Why trust a bunch of gamblers? Because they have the best track record! Polls have flaws. Some people lie to pollsters...

"Libertarians believe that you should be as conservative or as liberal as you want to be as long as you don't want to force yourself on others," says Larry Sharpe, Libertarian candidate for governor of New York.Sharpe is an unusual Libertarian candidate because he's doing well in some polls.One found Sharpe getting 13 percent, and after people heard his campaign pitch, 25 percent. That would put him in second place, ahead of the Republican.So of course the establishment shuts him out -- he and other third-party candidates weren't allowed in the one gubernatorial debate.Sharpe wins fans by arguing that it...

Social Security is running out of money. You may not believe that, but it's a fact. That FICA money taken from your paycheck was not saved for you in a "trust fund." Politicians misled us. They spent every penny the moment it came in. This started as soon as they created Social Security. They assumed that FICA payments from young workers would cover the cost of sending checks to older people. After all, at the time, most Americans died before they reached 65. Now, however, people keep living longer. There just aren't enough young people to cover my Social Security...

Union protestors and celebrity advocates have decided that waiters' tips aren't big enough... As usual, those who want the government to decide that workers must be paid more insist that "women and minorities" are hurt by the market. But waitress Alcieli Felipe is a minority and a woman. She says the celebrities and politicians should butt out. Thanks to tips, Felipe says in my new internet video, she makes "$25 an hour. By the end of the year, $48,000 to $50,000." She understands that if government raises the minimum, "It'll be harder for restaurants to keep the same amount of...

Today, all Americans are told, "Go to college!" President Obama said, "College graduation has never been more valuable." But economist Bryan Caplan says that most people shouldn't go. "How many thousands of hours did you spend in classes studying subjects that you never thought about again?" he asks. Lots, in my case. At Princeton, I learned to live with strangers, play cards and chase women, but I slept through boring lectures, which were most of them. At least tuition was only $2,000. Now it's almost $50,000. "People usually just want to talk about the tuition, which is a big deal,...

Maybe Donald Trump is such a powerful communicator and pot-stirrer that other countries, embarrassed by their own trade barriers, will eliminate them. Then I will thank the president for the wonderful thing he did. Genuine free trade will be a recipe for wonderful economic growth. But I fear the opposite: a trade war and stagnation -- because much of what Trump and his followers say is economically absurd. "(If) you don't have steel, you don't have a country!" announced the president. Lots of things are essential to America -- and international trade is the best way to make sure we...

Ross Ulbricht was a quiet nerd -- an Eagle Scout who never cursed. Then he became a libertarian, and he decided, "I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion." By coercion, Ulbricht meant force. He viewed laws against drugs as coercion -- government force that stops people from living the way they want. So he created a website called Silk Road. Silk Road let people buy and sell contraband -- mostly drugs -- using bitcoin. The site became successful quickly. It soon carried a billion dollars in transactions. Because Silk Road didn't use...

The government is open again. That's too bad. One day, one of these shutdowns should be permanent. We would still have far more government than the Founding Fathers envisioned. That's because even during so-called shutdowns, a third of federal employees -- nearly a million people -- remain on the job, declared "essential" government workers. Military pay continues, too, although political commentators, eager to make a shutdown sound scarier, repeatedly claimed that military families were being cut off. Here's a list of functions that kept going during the "shutdown": --Law enforcement. --Border Patrol. --The TSA. --Air traffic controllers. --The CDC. --Amtrak....

We need to sell more rhino horns, quickly. That may be the only way to save rhinos from extinction. Today, rhinos vanish because poachers kill them for their horns. Businesses turn their horns into ornaments or quack health potions. Some horns sell for $300,000. No wonder poachers risk their lives for one. How do you fight an incentive that strong? Flood the market! That's a solution suggested by Matthew Markus. Markus's biotech company can make artificial rhino horn in a laboratory that's virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Put enough of that lab-grown horn on the market and supply and...

President Donald Trump drives people crazy. Especially those in the media. They hate him so much, they leap on every anti-Trump rumor. The Federalist's Jordyn Pair points out that the press repeatedly told us that a dozen Trump administration members were about to be fired, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Press Secretary Sean Spicer and strategists Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. Months later, all still work for or with the administration. I actually wish Sessions had been fired, but Trump's staff reshufflings are no more frequent than those of other administrations, including President Obama's. The media so desperately want...

Fox's John Stossel penned a column on the "Green Baloney" at The New York Times featuring a May 13 story headlined "In Reversal, E.P.A. Eases Path for a Mine Near Alaska's Bristol Bay." It came with a big aerial picture of Dillingham, a fishing village on an inlet of the bay. We'll get to how "near" the mine is to the bay in a minute. They have hoped to mine copper, gold, and silver at the site. While this was just another of their stories about how Donald Trump will poison America, it caught my eye because of the big...

Expect more craziness this weekend. Earth Day is Saturday. This year's theme: Government must "do more" about climate change because "consequences of inaction are too high to risk." They make it sound so simple: 1) Man causes global warming. 2) Warming is obviously harmful. 3) Government can stop it. Each claim is dubious or wrong. This weekend at a movie, I was surprised to be assaulted again by former Vice President Al Gore. In a preview, a puffy-looking Gore suddenly appeared, attacking Donald Trump and mocking critics of his previous movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," the deceitful documentary that spreads fear...

"Trump may have just signed a death warrant for our planet!" warns CNN host Van Jones. "Disaster for Clean Water, Air," says the Environmental Working Group. Give me a break. Regulation zealots and much of the media are furious because President Donald Trump canceled Barack Obama's attempt to limit carbon dioxide emissions. But Trump did the right thing. CO2 is what we exhale. It's not a pollutant. It is, however, a greenhouse gas, and such gases increase global warming. It's possible that this will lead to a spiral of climate change that will destroy much of Earth! But probably not....

Donald Trump will be busy Friday. He and Mike Pence have promised, Mother Jones magazine points out, that on Trump's first day in office he will repeal Obamacare, end the "war on coal," expel illegal immigrants, begin construction of a "beautiful Southern border wall," fix the Department of Veterans Affairs, come up with a plan to stop ISIS, get rid of "gun-free zones," "start taking care of our ... military," withdraw from the TPP trade agreement, cut regulations and designate China a currency manipulator. OK, much of that was probably just campaign talk. I'm grateful for that. I hope...

Now that I no longer do a weekly TV show, I have more time to read my local paper. Sadly, that's The New York Times. The Times actually does some good reporting, but their political and economic coverage is filled with deceit. Can I find deceit every day? You bet. Take a look at a few days just last week. --Thursday: The front page: "NAFTA's promise is falling short, Mexicans agree." Wow, the Times now embraces Donald Trump's position on trade? Economists estimate that 14 million jobs depend upon NAFTA, but people everywhere often oppose trade because the smaller number...

Tomorrow, as you celebrate the meal the Pilgrims ate with Indians, pause a moment to thank private property. I know that seems weird, but before that first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims nearly starved to death because they didn't respect private property. When they first arrived in Massachusetts, they acted like Bernie Sanders wants us to act. They farmed "collectively." Pilgrims said, "We'll grow food together and divide the harvest equally." Bad idea. Economists call this the "tragedy of the commons." When everyone works "together," some people don't work very hard. Likewise, when the crops were ready to eat, some grabbed extra...

,/center> I was so dumb last week. I wrote my column Tuesday -- before election results were in. I assumed Hillary Clinton would be president-elect. I looked so stupid. On Facebook, commenters pounced: You owe Trump an apology! I'm sorry for the lies you continued about him! You were never fair! You're nothing but another left-wing mouthpiece. You're a washed up, anti-American gutless TV host! I was wrong because I trusted the bettors. That's usually not dumb. The best predictor of things has been betting markets. They are more accurate because they reflect the wisdom of crowds. Crowds can be...

America is often described as a society without the Old World's aristocracy. Yet we still have people who feel entitled to boss the rest of us around. The "elite" media, the political class, Hollywood and university professors think their opinions are obviously correct, so they must educate us peasants. OK, so they don't call us "peasants" anymore. Now we are "deplorables" -- conservatives or libertarians. Or Trump supporters. The elite have a lot of influence over how we see things. I don't like Donald Trump. I used to. I once found him refreshing and honest. Now I think he's a...

This week, as Democrats fawn over Hillary Clinton, I'm struck by how both Clintons continue to thrive despite their remarkable record of sleazy dealings. The just released documentary "Clinton Cash," based on a book by Peter Schweizer, explains how they make big money by selling access to themselves. In a conversation, Schweizer told me how the Clintons use "speaking fees" to get around bribery laws. "If somebody gave a politician or family member money for a favor, that's breaking the law. But if you say it's a speaking fee, and you pay double or triple the normal rate, that seems...

"The experience of having everybody around me on campus say the left is the way to go and then...seeing communism collapse made me think maybe the libertarians have a better handle on how these things work," says Todd Seavey, author of the new book Libertarianism for Beginners. "While the Soviet Union existed, the Marxists on campus were rooting for the Soviet Union." A New York-baseed comic-book writer, one-time producer for TV's own John Stossel, and a contributor to Splice Today, Seavey found his way toward libertarianism while attending Brown University in the late 1980s. His new graphic book, Libertarianism for...